In this brilliant and gripping medical detective story. Richard Rhodes follows virus hunters on three continents as they track the emergence of a deadly new brain disease that first kills cannibals in New Guinea, then cattle and young people in Britain and France -- and that has already been traced to food animals in the United States. In a new Afterword for the paperback, Rhodes reports the latest U.S. and worldwide developments of a burgeoning global threat.

""A vivid and engrossing account of a scientific saga worthy of Paul de Kruff's Microbe-Hunters.""–Beryl Lieff Benderly, San Jose Mercury News